


you gotta choose a side (you gotta pick)

by Yevynaea



Series: tryna fight for what's right and got sidetracked [3]
Category: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Genre: Character Death Fix, Co-workers, Comic Book Violence, Friendship, Gen, Humor, One Shot, POV Alternating, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Time Skips, Villains to Heroes, ripeter is there with no lines and mcu peter is there with one line so i just tagged the name, they're working on it at least
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-18
Updated: 2019-04-18
Packaged: 2020-01-15 21:20:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18507301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yevynaea/pseuds/Yevynaea
Summary: She goes to the kitchen and pulls a bottle of pain pills (only a little expired) and a mug out of the cabinet, filling the mug with water and downing five pills in short order.“That seems healthy,” Prowler comments. Liv flips him off, haphazardly puts the lid back on the pill bottle, and tosses it in the general direction of his face. He catches it in one clawed hand with the dull sort of clink of metal on plastic.(Or seven times Prowler and Doc Ock are kind of, sort of, maybe, possibly, slightly like friends.)





	you gotta choose a side (you gotta pick)

**Author's Note:**

> Aaron and Liv are mlm/wlw solidarity because they both take "be gay do crimes" to its logical extreme siri send tweet.
> 
> also hey did yall know tombstone has a daughter in the comics?? i sure didn't. marvel never fails to surprise me.
> 
> anyway enjoy gays bein' dudes

**#1: September 2012**

 

“Out of my way,” Liv orders, shoving the new guy out of her way to get to Spider-Man.

“We’re on the  _ same team, _ ” Prowler argues, catching one of her tentacles in his claws. Liv doesn’t want to admit that he has a point, so instead she wrenches the tentacle out of his grip and ignores him for most of the fight.

They lose in the end, pretty badly, but Prowler gets a good swipe in at one point, sending Spidey to his knees.

“Nice one,” Liv compliments Prowler, as close to an apology as she’s willing to give.

“...Thanks,” Prowler says, distracted for just a moment-- which is, of course, the moment Spider-Man uses to  _ thwip  _ out a web and swing toward them, landing his feet solidly in the middle of Prowler’s chest, and sending the man stumbling backward into Liv.

“ _Feh_!” she hisses, trying to twist away, regain her balance, but Spidey’s already swinging around, webbing them together. They fall over completely, landing hard on their sides, back to back. “I hate you.”

“Again, same team,” Prowler says. Liv kicks him, just because she can.

 

⯄🕷⯄🕷⯄

 

**#2: March 2013**

 

“Don’t touch that.” A tentacle none-too-gently smacks Prowler’s hand away from the glass he’d been reaching out to touch, and he scowls under the mask, sparing the mass of black ooze in the containment unit one last glance before moving to Ock’s side.

“What am I doing here, again?” Prowler asks, peering over the scientist's shoulder at whatever she’s messing with, only for her to shove him away with a hand to the face. She’s paying him handsomely to put up with her, though, so he clenches his fists instead of taking a swipe at her.

“I need your help,” she says simply. “I have a perfect trap for Spider-Man, it just needs to be baited, and I can’t do it myself.”

“Oh, so I’m the bait,” Aaron realizes, tone flat. “Fantastic.”

 

⯄🕷⯄

 

The trap doesn’t work. It comes very, very close-- so close that Ock lets her guard down, and her distraction allows Spider-Man to fight his way out. It’s more of a hasty, injured retreat than a victory, but that doesn’t mean Prowler and Ock won; they’re both a little banged up, Aaron’s got webs gumming up his claws, and Ock’s underground lab (the third in seven months, if Aaron’s count is right) has been absolutely trashed by the fighting.

“I was  _ so close! _ ” she yells, frustrated, gathering everything important that can be salvaged. She’s muttering to herself about moving it all to her work, or her apartment, until she’s got another space set up. She just has to get it all out of here before the PDNY, or SHIELD, show up. Prowler doesn’t offer his help, but Ock shoves an armful of lightly-scorched machinery into his hands anyway. “Carry these.”

“You better be payin’ me extra for this,” he grumbles. She scowls, but one tentacle waves him off in a  _ sure, fine  _ sort of gesture. Ock grabs an armful of blueprints that haven’t caught fire yet, a few prototypes, and the glass cylinder full of goo that Aaron’s been curious about since he saw it. And then she’s off, scuttling out and up, leaving her lab behind, and Prowler follows.

 

⯄🕷⯄

 

Liv doesn’t want to bring Prowler back to her apartment. But, then again, she figures, they’re  _ usually  _ on the same side, and her identity isn’t exactly airtight in their shared social circles-- her accident was fairly public, even if it wasn’t publi _ cized.  _ If Prowler doesn’t already know who she is, then it wouldn’t exactly be difficult for him to figure it out. So they go to Liv’s place.

They go up the fire escape and in through the window, and Liv drops the things she’s been carrying, takes her goggles off, and lets her hair down. Prowler stands awkwardly in the middle of her living room.

“First aid kit’s in the bathroom,” she informs him, “but anything you use out of it comes out of your pay.”

“‘Course it does,” Prowler says, putting his armful of salvaged lab equipment down next to hers. “I’m good, mostly just bruised.”

“Good for you,” Liv says, trying to breathe in deep, and wincing when her ribs give a familiar not-quite-fractured twinge. She goes to the kitchen and pulls a bottle of pain pills (only a little expired) and a mug out of the cabinet, filling the mug with water and downing five pills in short order.

“That seems healthy,” Prowler comments. Liv flips him off, haphazardly puts the lid back on the pill bottle, and tosses it in the general direction of his face. He catches it in one clawed hand with the dull sort of  _ clink  _ sound of metal on plastic. He hesitates, then opens the bottle and pulls his mask up to his nose for just long enough to put two pills in his mouth, swallowing them dry. “Thanks,” he says curtly, tossing the bottle back.

“Get out of my apartment,” Liv replies. Prowler snorts in amusement at the dismissal, but he goes, climbing back out the window they entered through.

“See ya, Doc,” he says, and then he’s gone, back down the fire escape. Liv makes sure to slam the window as loudly as possible behind him.

 

⯄🕷⯄🕷⯄

 

**#3: October 2015**

 

Team names, in general, should imply that there is, in fact, a team. With reliable members, shared goals, and other teamly such things. The Sinister Six is not like that at  _ all _ , and Aaron hates it.

Currently, he’s in an alley with Ock and a total stranger, staking out a building across the street, because they’re meant to warn those inside of Spider-Man and Daredevil’s arrival when the heroes get here. Their carefully-set trap won’t matter if the vigilantes can catch them off guard.

“Who’s this?” Prowler asks, jerking a thumb toward the lady he’s  _ never seen before,  _ because ‘the Sinister Six’ can  _ apparently  _ mean just any number of criminals off the street, whichever are available on any given day, whenever Kingpin decides to call them in. With no accounting for how people work together or whether they’re even willing to. Ridiculous.

The new lady’s dressed in purple and black, with armored pieces around the eyes of her mask that remind Aaron a little bit of Hawkeye’s old look. She’s got wings, so that’s pretty cool.

“Beetle,” the girl introduces herself, very purposefully standing up to full height. She’s not very tall, so it’s not that impressive.

“Tombstone’s kid, apparently,” Ock says. Aaron looks at her, then back at Beetle. Then back at Ock again.

“You gotta be kidding me,” he says. “ _ That _ guy has a kid?”

Ock snorts, equally amused by the idea. Beetle puffs up, defensive, but when they both look to her at the same time, she deflates a little, apparently not wanting to start shit with two team members on her first day.

“She’s smarter than him, at least,” Aaron says, and Ock hastily stifles a laugh.

“Look who’s here,” she says quietly, nodding to where Spider-Man’s just arrived, right on time, crouching on the side of the building they’ve been watching, headed toward the window they’ve left open for him.  _ Too easy.  _ Beetle relays news of Spidey’s arrival into her comms unit.

“Wasn’t Daredevil supposed to be with him?” Aaron asks lowly.

Right on cue, the nearest streetlight goes out in a spray of glass shards, plunging the alley into near-total darkness.

“Hey Prowler?” Ock asks, tone sugar-sweet.

“Yeah Doc?” Prowler replies, switching his mask to night vision.

“I’ll  _ kill  _ you.”

 

⯄🕷⯄🕷⯄

 

**#4: December 2018**

 

“Goblin’s lagging,” Prowler notes, leaning forward toward a narrow viewing window to see out into the half-built collider. Green Goblin roars, and Spider-Man’s voice replies, some clever quip or another echoing through the vast space. Liv isn’t really paying attention.

“Go cover him, then,” Liv replies. “I’m not going out there until all my calculations are done, this test needs to run  _ perfectly _ .”

The voice distortion built into Prowler’s mask makes his sigh sound more dramatic than he probably means it to, but he leaves to back up Osborn.

 

⯄🕷⯄

 

“I knew him,” Doc Ock says, apropos to nothing. Her lab’s been infiltrated by Spider-Man (again), and he lost the witness to Parker’s death, meaning they’re both keeping busy and keeping their heads down in the face of Kingpin’s anger. Currently, Prowler’s looking over the collider’s sparse security footage from that night, trying to catch any glimpse of his target’s face (with no luck-- he’s thinking he might have to get his hands on footage from the subway tunnels themselves), and Ock is directing repairs to get the collider ready for its next test.

“What?” Aaron asks, looking up from the footage.

“Peter Parker,” she explains, pointing a scientist carrying circuit boards in the right direction. “He was my intern, when he was an undergrad. When  _ this  _ happened.” Her tentacles give a synchronized ripple, making it clear what ‘ _ this’  _ is. Prowler doesn’t respond, Ock doesn’t volunteer any more information, and they both get back to work.

 

⯄🕷⯄

 

When Ock and the others reach May Parker’s house-- easily identifiable by the shrines outside, even from down the block-- Prowler can tell she’s been put in charge of the attack. Whether that was Fisk’s decision or something Ock insisted on, Aaron doesn’t know, but when Ock hesitates on approach, the others wait, looking to her for their cue. She looks troubled, behind the goggles, looking over all the candles and drawings and flowers set out in front of the house.

“We don’t have time for regrets, Doc,” Aaron says, to snap her out of it, and Ock bares her teeth in a snarl.

“You hang back, come in last,” she tells him. “Tombstone and Scorpion, round the back.”

Scorpion and Tombstone break off. As Prowler steps back, Ock sets a smile on her face.

She rings the doorbell.

 

⯄🕷⯄

 

“Where’s Prowler?” Liv asks nonchalantly, when they all regroup at the collider. She’s distracted-- first to return and quick to get back to work, so by the time the others show up she’s already in the thick of her final calculations. She’s got more than a few scrapes and bruises, thanks to the so-called  _ Spider-Gang _ , but she’s not in too rough of shape, and the others seem the same.

“He won’t be joining us,” Fisk answers. Liv looks up at him, surprised. Then she turns to Scorpion, who smirks, and Tombstone, who draws his finger across his throat in a single, telling line.

( _ Spider-Man doesn’t kill people,  _ is her first thought, followed immediately by the rationale that no,  _ their  _ Spider-Man, their Peter Parker, didn’t kill people. She doesn’t know these other spiders, what they’re willing to do, what they’re capable of.

Even as she thinks that, though, she knows it’s wrong. Fisk would be a lot more upset, if the Spiders were the ones to take Prowler off the board.)

 

⯄🕷⯄🕷⯄

 

**#5: February 2019**

 

“Don’t worry, I’ll pay to replace everything,” jokes the man Liv’s holding by the throat. He’s still holding the needle and thread he’d dug out of her first aid kit, his other hand held tense in a claw shape, fingertips against the living room wall as she holds him there with one tentacle. “You should really lock your windows, Doc.”

“I do,” she says, narrowing her eyes. She closes the front door behind herself, and approaches the trespasser. There are drops of blood on her carpet, and part of his shirt looks darker than the rest, fabric heavy with blood. The man’s wearing all black, loose clothes he can move and run in, and… heavy boots with purple accents.  _ Ah _ . “You’re not dead. What happened to the suit?”

“Lots of blood,” Prowler deadpans. “Fisk shot me, at Parker’s house.”

Liv lets him go, and he lands hard on his feet, winces. He goes back to where he was sitting on the couch before she got home, and pulls his shirt up to look at the wound he’s planning on stitching up.

“ _ Kitchen _ , you heathen, don’t get blood on my couch,” she snaps, and he raises an eyebrow, but grabs the first aid kit and moves, and she follows. “It’s not healed yet?”

“Oh, no, almost.  _ This  _ is new.” he gestures to the wound in his abdomen. “I got stabbed.”

“And what’s wrong with your place?”

“My nephew is waiting for me there. I didn’t want him to worry.”

Liv’s surprised. First he shows her his face, and then talks about his family. Prowler’s never been one to share personal information-- until now, apparently. It’s suspicious.

“Better fix that up quick, then,” she tells him. “And you  _ are  _ replacing the thread.”

He smiles, just a little. It’s weird to see him have… expressions. The mask just makes him look perpetually annoyed. Liv wonders how true that actually is, when they’re working.

“You still with Fisk?” he asks, casual, and  _ there it is _ . Her tentacles ripple, uneasy, ready for a fight, but Prowler’s unarmed, as far as she can tell, and focused on the first of his stitches.

“He’s locked up,” she says. “I heard Tombstone testified against him in exchange for a deal.”

“That’s not an answer.”

It really isn’t. Liv grits her teeth; Prowler could have made things right with Fisk by now, helping the man look for dissidents in the ranks, or he could be hunting down revenge the only way he can with the Kingpin in prison. There’s no way for her to know for sure. But… she does know  _ Prowler _ , to some extent at least.

“No,” she finally admits. “I haven’t heard anything. I think we’re all getting cut out.”

Prowler nods, and doesn’t get up. Revenge it is, then.

“He’s going back to basics,” he says. “Dirty cops and blackmailed civilians. We’re loose cannons.”

Liv hums thoughtfully in agreement.

“You talked to the Osborne kid yet?” he changes the subject. “He’s making lots of statements about how he’s changing his dad’s company, bringing it in a new direction… you might wanna make sure he’s not cutting ties with Alchemax.”

“He isn’t,” Liv dismisses, but the words don’t sound convincing, even to her. Prowler smiles, a little more smugly this time. Was he always making these fucking  _ faces _ , under his mask? It’s annoying. She doesn’t like it.

“Just a thought,” Prowler shrugs. He cuts the thread, leaves the bloodied needle on her table, sticks a bandage over his wound. “Good seein’ you, Doc.”

Then he pulls three knives-- her own, a glance at the knife block on the counter tells her-- out of his boots and the back of his waistband, and sets them on the table. Liv glares as he leaves, but it’s half-hearted. As much as she’d never admit it, she’s glad he’s alive.

 

⯄🕷⯄🕷⯄

 

**#6: June 2019**

 

(It’s raining tonight, and maybe that’s not the best weather in which to do something like this, but it’s a light rain, and Miles thinks it might at least make it easier to avoid prying eyes from below without having to be invisible all night. Nobody likes to look up at the rain. He’s perched, on the wall near the top of an old brick office building, watching the busy street below, watching lights flick on and off in the apartments across the way. He’s been waiting a half-hour by the time his patience pays off.

His spider-sense tells him when the villains he’s been waiting for are nearby. One is a dangerous prickle at the back of his neck, telling him not to keep his back turned to a threat. The other is a cautious shift of weight, his feet getting him ready to move. Miles turns invisible, takes a deep breath, and pushes both instincts away, keeping still and silent on the side of the building, not facing the two figures he knows are now behind him on the roof.)

 

⯄🕷⯄

 

“What are  _ you  _ doing here?” Prowler and Doctor Octopus demand at the same time, immediately on edge. Ock’s tentacles twitch, eager to strike, one of them easily coiling under her to lift her feet off the ground. Aaron opens his claws in warning.

“I found a note--” he starts, but cuts himself off, realizing that maybe he shouldn’t say that his superhero nephew invited him here with a note left on his windowsill.

“Same here,” Ock says with a frown, and she glances around the roof, lowering herself back onto her feet. Something occurs to Aaron, and he frowns too.

“Who was your note from?” he asks.

“It-- wasn’t signed,” Ock says, too fast to be the truth.

“Because if we were lured out here with the same name…” Aaron starts, and then he catches movement in the corner of his vision and whirls to face it, finding nothing. He glances back at Ock, over his shoulder, but she’s already facing away from him, and when he backs up a step she matches it, putting them almost back-to-back, watching for oncoming threats from all directions.

“That’d put us both in hot water,” Ock finishes his thought. “This feels like a trap, all of a sudden.”

“Or a test,” Aaron adds, scanning the roof first in night vision, then thermal, and finding no one else there besides the two of them.

“How’s that gunshot healing, Prowler?” Ock asks.

“Worry ‘bout yourself, calamari.”

“Ha, good one,” Ock says, flat and unamused. Aaron smirks under his mask.

 

⯄🕷⯄

 

Something comes at them fast, out of the rain, and two tentacles are stabbing through the air toward it before Liv tells them to. They easily catch and crush the thing, and it spills neon pink liquid over the ‘claws’ of her tentacles. Liv tenses, waiting, but nothing else happens. She draws the arms back in to examine the substance.

“It's just paint,” she says after a moment, confused, even as the pink begins to wash away in the rain. Another projectile-- water balloon-- comes from the other side of the roof, and Liv slices through it, this one bursting in a spray of orange.

“Okay,” Prowler says slowly. He glances over his shoulder at her, hesitant, before calling out. “Spider-Man? That you, kid?”

Liv looks at him askance, and he glares, or scowls, maybe, expression hard to read inside the mask. “What?” he demands. “You clearly know him too!”

She can’t deny it, so she scowls. “Uh-huh,” Prowler says, “that’s what I thought.”

Liv sees the water balloon coming for him, and doesn’t stop it. It collides with the back of his head, spattering green paint over him, and he curses.

_ “Point Spidey!” _ a somewhat tinny voice calls, and they both look over toward it. There’s a drone with an umbrella fitted over it, hovering there, just above a bucket of full balloons that’s spontaneously appeared on the edge of the roof. The voice is coming from the tablet the drone’s holding, where May and a young boy who Liv doesn’t know are visible on screen.

_ “Every time one of you gets hit, your opponent gets a point,” _ May says. She looks much too smug for Olivia’s liking.  _ “Every time you land a hit on the enemy, you get a point. This is a teamwork exercise, to see how well you fight together. First side to hit ten wins.” _

_ “It was my idea for us to keep score from here,” _ the boy chimes in, clearly proud of himself. Then they disappear from the screen and a score chart is displayed, reading  _ V - 0, S - 1.  _ V for villains and S for Spider-Man, presumably.

“Look out!”

Liv ducks as Prowler’s claws close around a balloon, right next to where her head was. It pops, spilling purple. Liv’s tempted to ask something along the lines of  _ what happened to ‘worry about yourself,’  _ but a larger part of her, the violent, competitive part that hasn’t gotten to fight anyone in a  _ while,  _ is already into the game. Prowler’s apparently just as ready; he jerks his head at the bucket of balloons. “I’ll cover you,” he says, and she grins, and goes for it.

 

⯄🕷⯄

 

Two balloons coming from different directions is what clues Aaron in to the fact that they aren’t dealing with only Miles. He dodges one, pops the other before it can hit the Doc.

“Here!” Ock says, and then a tentacle is shoving balloons into his hands, and he tests the give, pleased when they prove more durable than the average water balloon. He can throw these  _ hard. _ “Where is he?”

“There’s more than one,” Aaron tells her. “I haven’t seen them yet.”

The Spiders are keeping out of sight, and the rain is just loud enough to cover any  _ thwips _ , but it’s also cold enough that anyone keeping moving, keeping  _ warm _ , should-- he switches his mask back to thermal vision, and catches sight of one immediately as they duck back down out of sight, off the edge of the roof. “There!”

He points, and Ock’s off like a shot, dangling herself halfway off the roof by her tentacles to make the throw. There’s a splash and a groan of defeat that tell him the Spider’s been hit.

The scoreboard now reads 1-1. Aaron grins. They can win this.

 

⯄🕷⯄

 

They lose. Pretty badly.  _ 5-10,  _ blinks the drone, with an irritating little confetti animation on the screen. Liv flips it off, knowing May can see her.

“Good game!” Spider-Man says, holding his hand out for a fistbump, which Prowler gives him without a shred of reluctance. The other two Spideys, the girl in white-- Gwyn? Gwen?-- and an unfamiliar boy in red with dark accents, just offer handshakes, which Prowler also obliges, though he sighs while doing it. The three of them then come over to Liv, offering the same gestures of goodwill. She shakes all three of their hands with tentacles, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Another Peter Parker?” she asks, curious, of the one in red, and she gets narrowed-eye glances from the other two.

“Uh, yes?” he says. “Nice to meet you, Miss Doctor Octavius, ma’am.”

“Interesting. You’re younger than the other ones,” she muses, pulling him closer, reaching for his mask, only for one gloved hand and one clawed one to grab her wrists.

“Doc,” Spider-Man and Prowler both say, in the same warning tone, and she wrenches her arms free, but releases the young Peter.

“Sorry,” she smiles, and he takes a nervous step backward. “Habit.”

 

⯄🕷⯄

 

May Parker invites them all to her house for tea and shortbread. The tiny Peter apologizes profusely, says he has to get home to his aunt, and opens a portal, disappearing. Gwen agrees to “just one cup,” and Miles says “we’ll be there in ten,” staring at Aaron like he expects him to argue. Aaron just nods, realizing the decision’s out of his hands, and the eyes of Miles’ mask squint happily.

They go to May Parker’s house. Aaron takes his boots, claws, and mask off at the door. Gwen takes her mask off too, while Miles only rolls his just past his nose with a cautious glance toward Ock. The doc herself retracts her tentacles, takes her goggles off and replaces them with glasses, and lets her hair down.

“Who’s the shorty?” she asks, as Parker and Ganke come out of the kitchen.

“My friend,” Miles answers.

“Ganke Lee,” he introduces himself, putting the plate of shortbread cookies he’s carrying on the coffee table, then offering Ock a handshake that she accepts with obvious reluctance.

“So, I thought the exercise went well,” May says, sipping her tea as the others find seats around her living room. To Aaron’s surprise, Ock sits right next to their hostess, legs curled under herself, one arm slung over the back of the couch and around May’s shoulders. “Good teamwork from you two, even though we sprung it on you.”

Ock smiles, obviously proud of herself, and leans in for a kiss, which May gives her. Aaron doesn’t realize he’s staring until Ock notices and raises her nose at him for it.

“Something to say?” she demands.

“No, I just didn’t realize you were, uh,” he hesitates, and she glares harder.

“ _ Gay _ ?” she asks. Aaron snorts, highly aware of the growing tension in the room.

“Of course I knew you were  _ gay _ \--” he starts, and she scoffs, doubtful.

“What, you think you have gaydar?” she asks, patronizing.  _ Oh _ . Aaron sees what’s going on.

“How dare you mistake me for a straight person,” he says, as solemnly as he can. There’s a beat before the kids start laughing, and Ock relaxes, tension dissolving. “Nah, I just didn’t realize you were with someone…”

“Quite literally playing for the other team?” May asks, amused, and Aaron nods, glad she understands. “We were college roommates.”

_ “Oh my god, they were roommates,”  _ all three kids murmur at the same time. Aaron rolls his eyes and reaches over to shove Miles, who only laughs harder than ever, rolling out of his chair.

“I seduced her,” Ock says proudly. May scoffs.

“You didn’t, but keep telling yourself that,” she replies. Then, to Aaron, “Anyway, she came here after everything with Fisk’s collider. We’ve… worked it out.”

“She actually put these together,” Gwen says, still fighting giggles, showing off the dimension-hopping bracelet all the Spiders seem to have.

“You didn’t think to mention any of this, man?” Aaron demands of his nephew.

“I didn’t!” Miles replies honestly. “I keep almost forgetting who knows who and who knows what. I almost mentioned Doc to  _ Dad  _ the other day.”

“Oh, he’d flip,” Aaron chuckles.

“Wait, you know his dad?” Ock asks. “Do you know who Spider-Man is?! Is  _ that  _ why you’ve flipped sides?”

Aaron freezes, realizing his mistake.

“See?” Miles demands, gesturing at Ock, apparently vindicated by Aaron’s slip-up. “It’s hard to keep track of!”

 

⯄🕷⯄🕷⯄

 

**#7: August 2019**

 

“I don’t think you know what you’re doing,” Peter B. says. Liv and Aaron both flip him off in unison, and he raises his hands in surrender, stepping back with a smirk.

“We’re following the recipe,” Liv says insistently.

“Didn’t Aunt May offer to do this?” P.B asks.

“She did,” Aaron agrees. “But then she said she’d be able to help Rio with the rest of the food if  _ we  _ could do the cakes.”

“A tempting offer,” P.B admits. He’s still smirking.

“Get out, you’re distracting us,” Liv says, three tentacles shoving him out of the kitchen. Then she stares at the recipe card for a long moment. “I think we forgot the eggs.”

“...Fuck,” Aaron says. He steadfastly ignores P.B laughing at them from just outside the kitchen. “It’s fine, right? This is only the first cake, it doesn’t matter as much.”

“Remind me why we’re making two?” Liv asks. Aaron just looks at her.

“You’ll see,” he says solemnly.

 

⯄🕷⯄

 

_ “...happy birthday to Miles, happy birthday to you,”  _ they all sing. It’s Jeff, Rio, Aaron, May, Liv, MJ, Ganke, and the various Spiders who’ve hopped over from their own dimensions, and with the exception of Gwen and MJ, they’re all horrendously off-key. Miles doesn’t seem to mind, though, too busy being amused and embarrassed by the singing itself.

“Make a wish,  _ mijo _ ,” Rio says, after they’ve stumbled through the song in both English and Spanish. As Miles blows out the candles, Jeff nods once to Miguel, who grins and rushes forward, pushing Miles’ face down into the cake as soon as all the candles are out. Everyone laughs, some more shocked than others, while Miles sputters.

“Dad! You said you wouldn’t this year!” he protests.

“I didn’t!” Jefferson defends, wheezing with laughter. “I knew I wouldn’t be able to sneak up on you, with your spider-sense thing.”

“So he got me to do it,” Miguel says proudly.

“You’re both horrible,” Miles says seriously, wiping frosting away from his eyes.

“And that’s why we made two cakes,” Aaron informs Liv, who’s too breathless to reply, so she just gives him a thumbs up. She’s cackling so hard she’s leaning on May just to stay upright. Aaron pats her on the shoulder as he passes by, toward the kitchen. “I’ll go get the other one.”

**Author's Note:**

> the "jeff and rio find out miles is spidey" fic is up next now that i have a timeline to stick it in, but also we're getting close to College Finals Time, so...it might be a hot minute before i can finish that one. thanks in advance for your patience d(´∀`)b


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